Our Mission
Inclusive Action’s mission is to serve underinvested communities and build thriving local economies by improving access to transformative capital, and advancing policy through collaborative research and community-driven advocacy.
Our Origin Story
Inclusive Action for the City was founded in 2008 by a group of friends dreaming of a brighter future for our communities and coming together to spark innovation in community economic development.
The organization’s founders wanted to get creative to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life for residents in LA’s low-income neighborhoods. While many of the typical “urban renewal” initiatives were ineffective and tainted with racism, our founders wanted to reclaim these efforts and center them on equity and the experiences of marginalized communities.
Inclusive Action was born to create new ways to alleviate income inequality and invest in our communities. We believe that equitable community development begins with engaging the true experts: the residents, families, workers, small business owners, and entrepreneurs in our city.
In our early years, our organization was led by volunteers. Alfred Fraijo, a Boyle Heights native and land-use attorney, convened Inclusive Action’s first-ever meeting – bringing together a community of friends who dedicated their spare time to envisioning community development that was equity-driven and transformative.
Inclusive Action was incorporated in 2009 and gained 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 2010 under its original name, Leadership for Urban Renewal Network (LURN). Alfred and the founding members, Ginger Hitzke, Rudy Espinoza, Ricardo Mireles, Reagan Meachling, and others, hosted meetings to highlight important issues in the city, like affordable housing and small business development. They also partnered with local universities to study issues impacting low-income neighborhoods like the criminalization of street vendors.
In 2013, Inclusive Action hired its first full-time staff member. Since then, we’ve continued our work to redefine community development in Los Angeles and beyond. We proudly co-founded the LA Street Vendor Campaign and worked with our partners to fight for – and win – the legalization of street vending across California.
We have also led other major economic justice initiatives including developing a purchasing cooperative to bring healthy produce to small markets in food deserts; passing the nation’s first comprehensive commercial tenant protection law; and launching micro-finance programs to support small businesses in low-income neighborhoods. We’ve piloted innovative real estate projects to preserve small businesses and housing in gentrifying neighborhoods and to explore ways for community members to become real estate owners.
Responding to community need to break down barriers to accessing small business loans, Inclusive Action became a certified lender in California in 2018 and a community development financial institution (CDFI) in 2020. Through our small business lending programs, we serve hundreds of entrepreneurs each year in immigrant communities and historically marginalized communities.
Throughout our history, we’ve been committed to fighting for working people and combining interventions together that deliver resources at the same time we’re working to change systems. We believe that to advance economic justice we must engage in advocacy, finance, and innovation – and above all, we must do it with the community.
We’ve come a long way since our founding. Today, Inclusive Action has a growing team of dozens of full-time professionals advancing our advocacy and community lending work. As our city faces unprecedented challenges, Inclusive Action has a vision of expanding our work to make our government and financial institutions work for Angelenos, and scaling of our experiments in real estate acquisition, community engagement, and more. We are optimistic about the future of our communities, because we have seen the power of innovation, broad coalitions, and community-centered programs. Join us!